Huskies ranked No. 28 in national preseason football poll

TRUSSVILLE —The High School Football America released its first preseason top 100 teams rankings on Sunday. Alabama was represented by four of the top 100 teams with a familiar program on top of the list of Alabama high school teams.

With a little over two months to go before the first game of the season, HSFA rolled out their top 100 teams across the entire United States in high school football. In an attempt to explain how they came up with the rankings, the website explains with the following statement:

“For those of you not familiar with our rankings, they are created with our proprietary algorithm. As I always like to tell everyone, the preseason rankings are designed to celebrate the start of the regular season and our algorithm is designed to work better in-season when on-the-field results count.”

With that said, the state of Alabama had four teams ranked in the preseason poll beginning with Thompson High School coming in ranked 54th in the country. The Warriors finished the 2017 season 12-1, losing in the semi-finals to Hoover. Thompson began the 2017 season ranked 64th in the HSFA rankings.

Coming in ranked 39th is Central Phenix City. The Red Devils finished 2017 11-1, losing in the semi-finals to McGill-Toolen. Central began the 2017 season ranked 69th by HSFA.

Coming in ranked 28th are the Hewitt-Trussville Huskies who finished 2017 with an 11-1 record after losing to Hoover in the second round of the playoffs. The Huskies are only one of three teams ranked in the top 30 who were unranked in the 2017 preseason HSFA rankings.

And finally, the highest ranking Alabama school would be the reigning 7A state champs of Hoover High School coming in ranked sixth overall. The Bucs finished 2017 11-3, defeating McGill-Toolen in the championship game. Hoover was ranked 43rd at the beginning of the 2017 season by HSFA.

To add to this impressive list, HSFA also ranked “bubble teams” who ranked just outside the top 100 with Pinson Valley coming in at 103.

What’s even more impressive is the fact that three of the five teams ranked, Hoover, Hewitt-Trussville, and Thompson, all face each other in 2018 as competing teams in Region 3 of the 7A classification. Add to that the fact that Hoover will open up against Pinson Valley and the states best high schools are not only well represented in this preseason ranking but will also give high school football fans the opportunity to see each one play one another.